What To Know About Amazon's Zoox Robotaxi

Amazon.com AMZN spent over $1 billion to acquire autonomous company Zoox earlier this year. The unit showed off its robotaxi platform on Monday.

What Happened: Zoox debuted a carriage-style vehicle that it said could offer autonomous robotaxi services.

The vehicle has over 100 proprietary safety innovations. The company is the first in the industry to showcase a drivable, purpose-built robotaxi capable of operating at up to 75 mph.

Related Link: Amazon’s Zoox Acquisition Can Boost Logistics, Lower Long-Term Costs

Why It’s Important: Zoox combines artificial intelligence, robotics, vehicle design and sustainable energy to bring the vision of autonomous driving to life. Zoox was started in 2014.

The new car has a small footprint and has four face-to-face seats. The vehicle eliminates a steering wheel.

The vehicle from Zoox has a 133 kilowatt-hour battery that can provide 16 hours of continuous use on a single charge.

The other company that could benefit from Zoox is Velodyne Lidar VLDR. Velodyne is a lidar partner with Zoox and provides some of the key technology for the robotaxi unit.

“The vehicles utilize a unique sensor architecture of cameras, radar, and LIDAR to obtain an unrivaled 270-degree field view on all four corners of the vehicle, eliminating typical blind spots and allowing the vehicle to consistently track objects next to and behind it, including pedestrians, bicyclists, and other road users,” according to Zoox. 

While the release didn’t specifically name Velodyne, the two companies have been working together for years.

Benzinga's Take: The news from Zoox and the involvement of lidar could put companies that have all recently gone public via SPAC in in the spotlight. 

Lidar companies include Velodyne, Luminar Technologies LAZR; Aeva going public with InterPrivate Acquisition Group IPV; and Innoviz, which recently announced a SPAC merger with Collective Growth Corporation CGRO.  

AMZN, VLDR Price Action: Shares of Amazon were up 2.01% to $3,178.90 Monday. Shares of Velodyne Lidar were up 6.46% at $19.51.

Photo courtesy of Zoox.